Focus on: Land - making the most of assets in the east and south east
Published date : 22 September 2011
Accessing land for housing supply is a vital ingredient in successful economic growth in the east and south east.
The HCA plays a key role in Government’s ambition to make the best use of public land to benefit communities. So, we are continually challenging ourselves to look for new ways to bring forward surplus public land and speed up development for the creation of new homes and employment opportunities across the operating area.
In the east and south east we have the second largest landholding in the agency, around 2080 hectares. Mike Goulding, area manager in the east and south east explains more about our role in developing this land.
What is the HCA’s role in disposing of land?
The HCA’s role is to deliver land as quickly and cost effectively as possible and to get the best financial outcome for the Agency. We can also help public sector partners dispose of their land in the same way via offering strategic and practical advice and support. Offering our skills can be a very cost effective way for a local authority to bring forward a site more quickly.
What are the key sites in east and south east?
There are quite a few. For example, we have a number of ex-MoD and NHS sites such as Northstowe, which was Oakington Barracks and is strategically the most important site for the agency outside of London. It’s a proposed new town of up to 10,000 homes and related facilities. Other ex-MoD sites include Connaught Barracks in Dover. We also bought a lot of NHS hospitals such as; Severalls and Runwell in Essex, Stonehouse in Kent and Milford in Surrey, plus other strategic sites such as Spencer’s Park in Hertfordshire, sites in Epsom, Surrey and Crawley in Sussex, plus Basildon in Essex and north Kent. We are still in the process of working out the significance of the new sites in our remit which came over from the RDAs recently, now part of the Economic Assets Programme. You can read more about our land on our land and regeneration pages.
With the recent HCA Land Disposal Strategy being published this year, how will this affect the agency’s ability to dispose of land?
It will have a very positive effect. The Land Disposal Strategy advocates the use of the HCA’s Delivery Partner Panel (DPP) for example, and initiatives we can test such as Build Now Pay Later and the accelerated disposals processes – which is access to additional funding via DCLG. It builds on what we have been doing already and streamlines the process across the agency in a coordinated and uniform way, making best use of good practice. The DPP also allows us to manage the procurement process in-house rather than using public money on consultants to manage the process externally, this saves the Agency money.
What are the main challenges you have found to disposing of HCA land?
The HCA inherited a number of ‘challenging’ sites in disposal terms from English Partnerships as it was part of our predecessor’s role to purchase these sites and make a difference with ‘gap’ funding, such as the hospitals purchased from the NHS and the ex-MoD sites that I mentioned before. So now we still have a lot of these challenging sites left to make the best use of, and we have to re-imagine how we can deliver homes on these sites with no direct funding available.
What has worked well?
The DPP process worked really well with Severalls Hospital. It also helps to have a comprehensive development brief which includes clear instructions and all the relevant information relating to the site. In the case of Severalls, this enabled the developers tendering for the work to compile really robust proposals for us to assess. In turn we were able to be very clear with our assessment and hire the best contractor for the job. Even the feedback from unsuccessful developers in this process was positive.
We were also able to help the local authority, Colchester Borough Council, with strategic advice and support as a ‘critical friend’. We revised the section 106 agreement and engineered a funding agreement with the County Council which enabled them to forward-fund the infrastructure which in turn enabled access roads to be built first before the houses. We were also able to fund part of the A12 junction through ourCommunity Infrastructure Fund which again enabled crucial access and was imperative to the success of the overall development. We also gained reserved matters planning consent which includes detailed design on the houses to be built. This made it extremely attractive for a developer to come on board and start building houses without these extra costs.
On another project, Bowthorpe Three Score in Norwich we were able to help our partners unlock their land for housing through an innovative deal which saw the Agency invest money in youth and public realm and housing projects, and in turn the local authority made some of its land available for much-needed Affordable housing in the area. However, budgetary constraints and the embargo on the Agency being able to undertake external consultancy, almost brought the procurement of the housing scheme to a halt.
Luckily, our local area team were able to provide a detailed property report and accompanying site appraisals which followed on from earlier consultancy advice. This ‘internal’ advice, with the HCA acting as a critical friend, saved the Partnership in the region of £40k of work that would ordinarily have been provided by consultants.
What skills and expertise can we offer partners looking to dispose of and develop land?
We have been able to broker deals with partners, such as the ones outlined above, to make land more attractive to developers at a time when they are applying low-risk strategies and exercising caution with new sites due to the economic situation and subsequent dip in house building. We can also negotiate on their behalf if they require us to. We have numerous in-house skills in land disposal which we can offer other public sector partners, such as local authorities, to help them dispose of their land for the benefit of local communities. We also have planners and surveyors with experience of disposing of large complex sites and the ATLAS team who are specifically pulled in when large planning applications are involved.
What about the influx of more land into the HCA such as assets from the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs)?
Clearly, the Government has entrusted these sites into our care given our strong and successful track record of delivering sites in an efficient and cost-effective way. We also have plenty of experience working in partnership with other public bodies, so the stewardship model should work well. The recently launched Economic Assets Programme will help us dispose of these sites, and we welcome the new staff from RDAs into the HCA fold to help us with this task. It’s early days yet but we recognise its is a big task.
About Mike
Mike Goulding is Area Manager for Kent and Essex and Norfolk. He is a Chartered Surveyor with 15 years of experience. Mike used to work for the NHS Estates and Investures; then English Partnerships before joining the HCA in 2008, and has always been based in the eastern parts of England.
